Ad’ing Value

Ok, one of my beefs with Facebook’s new F8 platform is it’s horrible documentation.

It takes me maybe an hour to figure out how to do something as simple figure out how to use the API.

In case anyone is looking for that information here’s the scoop:

Every API call is made using this structure - $facebook->api_client->

Each of the calls can be found here.

Here’s what they don’t tell you, each of these API methods have to be translated before they can be used.

Example 0.1 - Creating a call

If you would like to know if 2 users are friends, you use the friends.areFriends call, but the proper code is not
$facebook->api_client->friends.areFriends(). Instead, it is $facebook->api_client->friends_areFriends();

Greaaaaaat, now we just have to figure out how to use it.

Example 1 - Are 2 users friends?

From the API documentation, we can see that friends.areFriends takes in 2 arrays, uids1, and uids2 to compare. That means that we need to pass 2 arrays. Our code comes out to look something like this:

$friend_case = $facebook->api_client->friends_areFriends(array($user1), array($user2));

If you look at the response,

<friend_info>
<uid1>1240077</uid1>
<uid2>1240078</uid2>
<are_friends xsi:nil="true"/>
</friend_info>

You can see that the ‘are_friends’ is what holds the information we want, so to access it, we call

$are_friends = $friend_case[0];
$are_friends[’are_friends’].

There. Simple, isn’t it? But not something that can always be apparent to everyone. I really wish that Facebook would just put a bit more manpower on their own documentation, so that their users wouldn’t have to.

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Gaia Online: Second Life for the Graphically Challenged

Don’t have a 512Mb video card and 2gigs of RAM? Longing for old school RPGs where the characters were 2D sprites? Compulsive MySpace/Facebook checker? Do you like anything Anime style?

Gaia Online is for you.

Gaia Online is a cross between an old school RPG and a social networking site. You can build a member page, ala MySpace and Facebook, communicate with friends, and meet new people, but at the same time it offers things that other social networks don’t: continuous gameplay.

That’s right, you can do quests, buy, sell, or trade items, build up your avatar with the newest and most awesome items, armor, clothes, and weapons. You can interact with other people in a 2D world, you can fish, gamble, play slots, earn money and a multitude of other prizes to gear up your avatar.

Here’s what they have to say:

Founded in 2003 by a few comic book fans in a garage, Gaia Online has become the fastest-growing hangout on the web. Millions of teens come to Gaia every month to play games, make friends, and participate in the world’s most active online community.

Source

Gaia has millions of members and boasts that it has “nearly two million unique visitors… each month” and that “three hundred thousand members log in to Gaia every day, and those members spend an average of two hours on the site daily.”

Two hours, that’s a ton of time when you think about it in context of daily web surfing. How long do you usually spend on Facebook or MySpace once you have been using it for a few months? You check your friend requests, group requests, answer some messages and maybe a wall post or two. Total time? For me, that’s about 15 to 20 minutes a day, every other day, then I’m gone.

What does this graph say? Well, that Gaia Online’s usage by its members per day is growing at 3 times the rate of MySpace’s usage and 300 times that of Facebook.

So what’s the appeal? Well, there is just that much more to do in Gaia Online.

From the site’s about page:

• Online Hangout: Millions of teens spend hours a day on Gaia, exploring, chatting and just hanging out. Whether they’re posting on our forums, participating in special events, or playing our multiplayer mini-games, there’s always something fun to do.
• Endless Customization: Gaia revolves around creative customization. Every member can create their own virtual character and dress it up with over five thousand items: clothes, accessories, pets, masks and just about anything else imaginable.
• Thriving Community: Gaia Online boasts one of the most active forum communities in the world with over one billion posts to date. Members can chat in our online games, post messages on our forums, or send each other private messages.
• Gaia Gold Marketplace: Gaia Online is free to join, and members earn free Gaia Gold for everything they do on the site- posting, playing games, or just hanging out. Members can buy thousands of items in our virtual stores, or they can set up their own shops. Our virtual auction house lets members buy, sell and trade their items– over 50,000 auctions are completed every day!
• Fun and Games: Members can interact, have fun, and earn Gaia Gold with our quick and casual online games. They can also go head-to-head in our Avatar Arena to see who can make the coolest virtual outfit, or test their talents in the Art Arena, where thousands of members vote on the best original artwork.

With a thriving economy, endless items and engaging games, there’s always a reason to stay an extra 10 minutes on Gaia.

Here’s my avatar:

He likes to rock the Scythe, but he has a softer side, shown by his love for his “mimzy,” one of the collector items that were introduced to Gaia Online to promote “The Last Mimzy” movie.

A social network exploding in size is nothing new, but now that they are aging, keeping those same users interested and logging on will be the make-it or break-it for many fledgling networks.

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MySpace launched a new news service just last week.

Unfortunately, from a quick look at the site, it seems like it has not been garnering much traffic or votes.

Show Home Page Screen Shot ▼

Here comes the irony:

This story, featured in the home page of MySpace News, seems to capture the let down that the site has amounted to so far.

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Seems like video sharing sites are popping up like social networks these days. This is a new video sharing site bills itself as:

Funny or Die is a way to get exclusive comedy videos from some of the world’s top comedians. With Funny or Die you can:

• See the lastest comedy videos from top talent.
• Rate those videos with your vote.
• Upload your own original comedy videos.
• … and much, much more!

So is it funny? I guess, that, we decided.

Click Here To Show Funny or Die Video ▼

If you want more Will, here you go:

Update: The Funny or Die video is on auto start and that’s killing me. It’s starting to get REALLY annoying. So I hid it. If you want to see it you can just click the link above.

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I love to test out new social network systems to see what they can handle, CSS, Javascript, embeds, and how people deal with them in their database entries. Most of the stuff I could write on here would not be anywhere near interesting to people who might actually read this, so I’ll get to the good stuff.

Just like MySpace, B4Class lets you customize the layout by adding certain codes to your profile page. There are a few things that you can do easily, such as change the background colors, the font/link colors and sizes, etc. The things that I won’t show you how to do are: remove ads (they are there for a reason, and in my opinion shouldn’t be removed by any user), or remodel your whole page for you (I just don’t have the time).

so here goes…

The way to change the styling on the page is to add some simple code inside your profile. I added mine to the “What would you like to tell people about yourself” part.

Here’s a simple snip to turn all of the backgrounds pink, just cut and paste it somewhere in your profile:

<style type="text/css">#bottomclearcontainer,#leftsidemenu, .silverGradient,.box,#topProfileDetails,#IdealMatchbox {background-image:none;background-color:pink;}</style>

You can replace the word pink with blue, black, white, or whatever you want.

Here’s a simple pink profile with a blue page background

<style type="text/css">body{background:lightblue;} #bottomclearcontainer,#leftsidemenu,.silverGradient,.box, #topProfileDetails,#IdealMatchbox{background-image:none; background-color:pink;}</style>

Again you can change lightblue to anything you like.

This is really cool stuff. If you want to choose other colors, instead of lightblue or pink, you can put HEX values.
Example: instead of “background:lightblue”, you can write letters and numbers that represent a color such as: “background:#6ee9ff” which is a brighter blue.

<style type="text/css">body{background:#6ee9ff;} #bottomclearcontainer,#leftsidemenu,.silverGradient,.box, #topProfileDetails,#IdealMatchbox{background-image:none; background-color:pink;}</style>

To find more colors, check this out to get you started.

Have fun! If anyone has any questions, just drop me a comment. But remember, nothing about ads, and nothing too extreme :-D.

If you found this useful, post a link in your profile and let your friends know they can do it too!

Link:

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I’ve written before about the OLPC, hell, I even had a photo of myself in one a few days back, but I just saw these photos up on CNet about the OLPC in action and wanted to get them out there.

Here’s a snip:

These 10- and 11-year-old students are lucky to share three books per academic subject, a clock, bell, wall calendar, and science equipment consisting of a lever. Students in less fortunate schools might share three books total. With the XO Children’s Machine, OLPC hopes young students will have the tools to shape their own education.

Disclosure: This is such a great project, and the company I work for has been doing pro-bono work for them, but seeing them actually in the field and in the hands of kids is altogether amazing.

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When I needed to study for the SAT, I bought a book. Not to say I used it, but I had the damned thing. Kids these days have another choice: B4Class.

Caught from Socially Adept and via Scott, B4Class.com has been causing a splash around Boston.

What struck me about the site is that at first it seems primarily like a advertisement site for this 18 year old girl, Sofia Loginova. Her photo is everywhere. Signing up I thought I was joining one of those barely legal Teen model sites, because all I saw was that same photo of hers. I guess in the future, kids won’t just have to worry about popularity contests like prom.

Don’t get me wrong: young entrepreneurs rock, props to her for doing her thing and going for it. My question is, was this her idea, or did someone approach her to get a cool, young figurehead for the site.

The site is actually fairly well designed and has lots of great features. Many of them are offered by turnkey social network solutions, but the one thing I noticed is the Communications Bar at the bottom of the page. Having this feature simply available on the site is one thing, but creating something like a Firefox add-on could really take off.

Sofia’s site has definitely gone grass roots, shunning traditional media in favor of more guerrilla tactics. I’ve found some other interesting bits about it on the web, like this TechCrunch forum post. Wow, $200,000 for a 17(?) year old entrepreneur’s first dab. Not bad at all.

Staying true to this new generation, the site is plagued with spelling errors. Kinda makes you wish they had a copy editor, (1) (2). Well, but that might just be part of their charm!

Maybe it’s just me, but there seem to be a bit too many ads on the site. Even written into the body of their profile manager:

All in all, I think the site shows some promise, especially if they play up their unique “SAT, GMAT help” feature.

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For all you environmentally conscious people out there, there is a brand new social network for you.

EnergyRace.com is tapping into the power of the social web to do a bit of good in the world. Sign-up, find out how much impact you are really having on the environment, and pledge to make changes. Get your friends to sign up and you can see how all the changes you and you friends make adds up.

You can even get a cool little badge, you can see it on my sidebar.

If anyone knows Al Gore, make sure you sign up and send him an invite! I’d do it, but hey, I don’t like to get political.

Disclosure: One of the developers is a good friend of mine, Scott Jehl, and I’ve had some of his other work listed before (WriteMaps.com). Jon Reil was the other part of the team. According to Scott:

[Andre] might have had a hand in some dev strategy as well…

So there you go.

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I’ve been doing a lot of research into Social Networks lately, and the one thing I’ve found in common about many of them is that they are, in one way or another, horrid looking.

I know, I know, and even though I’m publishing this blog on the default layout for now, it’s still better than some of these sites. Checking out the list that rev2 put out, I found this site in one of the comments: SocialSomething.

I really don’t know what’s worse, the layout or the color choice.

OR check out this gem, VideoModelPics.

Wait, what’s this? Why is it so messed up? What? CSS doesn’t work with firefox? This is a disgrace. I’m not going to use IE just to visit the “The one-stop cool & interesting people network.” <-- this is directly from their site.

Seems like social networks are the new "webpages" of the Web2.0. Everyone and their mom feels like they need one and thinks they can throw something up and make a quick buck or get the next MySpace or Facebook. It's the "American Dream of Cyberspace":

And a Social Network running from every garage!

Not to say I don’t have my own in the works ;).

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Doing a quick search on the web I came across this Beta: AboutUs. It seems to be a wiki about web pages, any and all, on the internet. I simply did a search for my domain, adingvalue.com and the site said there was no match. Before I could even find a place on the page to sign-up and add it, it did a little automagic scanning and added it! It even got my about information into the page, wow! This is cool stuff.

Seems like they’ve been around since July ‘06 according to the first post in their blog, but it’s news to me, and tagged not really news for you!

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